“Well, it wasn’t enough tonight.”
He yanked her closer to him, so close her eyes could no longer focus on his face. She stood her ground though, her high-heeled feet digging into the floor as his brutal fingers jammed her jaw. “I can’t have my ringer bringing me nothing.”
“Sometime you win, sometime you lose, sometimes it rains. That’s the way it goes,” she said in as flat a voice as she could muster.
He dropped his hold on her chin, then stared at her curiously, as if she were a science project. “I do not like baseball. Do not give me baseball analogies. Give me your best poker face and beat my whales. That is all I want from you.”
“That’s what you’ll keep getting.”
“But Red, I did not like your performance tonight. If it happens again, I will be adding on to your totals.”
Her heart plunged and she wanted to shriek No. A loud, echoing cry that would carry through the night. “It’s not even my fault. It’s not even my money,” she said, insistently, as if that might change his mind.
“It is your fault. It is your money. And you are mine until I say you’re not,” he said, rooting around in his pocket. He took out his knife, opened it, and stabbed it into the wood of the table. She cringed, and there was no hiding her emotions this time as the sound of metal parking itself into wood rattled in her ears. He didn’t remove the blade; he left it in the wood like some strange trophy. “Or do you want me to visit your pretty bartender friend?” He asked, making a circle over his stomach, as a reminder that he knew Kim was pregnant.
Her heart twisted. “No.”
“How about your sister? She’s a lovely lady and quite perky on that little fashion blog of hers,” Charlie said in his cool even voice.
It was as if he’d sliced her open with his knife, her bleeding organs on display for all to see. Julia bit her lip hard, trying to stop her insides from quivering. Charlie had never gone near her sister, or her friends. He’d also never mentioned McKenna until now, and her heart raced at the pace of fear. She’d do anything to keep her sister away from him. “Please leave them out of this. This has nothing to do with them.”
“That’s right,” he said with a firm nod, pointing from her to him. “It is our business, and we will continue do business until it is all resolved, or else I might need to collect from them too. Is that clear?”
With his words, the floor felt out from under her. He’d done it. He’d done the thing she feared. Threatened her family. Fear coursed through her body, rooting itself in her belly in a twisted knot, where it planned to set up camp for a long, long time. “Yes,” she choked out.
“Now get out of here, and I will call you when I have a game you won’t mess up.”
She turned on her heels, and left the restaurant, Skunk holding open the door. He lowered his voice to a whisper, as if he didn’t want Charlie to hear him. “Want me to call you a cab?” He asked, and he sounded like a sweet, sympathetic bear. Like he legitimately wanted to do something nice for her after the way Charlie had treated her. He had some kind of soft spot for her. But she wasn’t going to be fooled. She knew where his loyalties lay and it wasn’t with the woman he wanted to help. It was with the man who owned him, just as Charlie owned nearly everyone he worked with.
Except her. She told herself Charlie only rented her and eventually the lease would be up.
“No thank you. I don’t need a cab,” she said, and walked home in the night, the fog crawling into the city, threatening to ensnare the night. She brushed her hand roughly against her cheek, wiping away a tear.
But another one fell, and then another, and that’s how she walked home, wishing there were a way to unravel herself faster from Charlie’s clutches. Wishing she’d never met Dillon, that he’d never made off with $100,000 from the mobster he worked for, that he’d never claimed the money was for her.
When she reached her home and poured herself a glass of whiskey, her fingers itched to pick up the phone and call Clay. To tell him why she ran, that she missed him, that this weekend was the best she’d ever had.
But she could still feel Charlie’s hand on her chin, and she knew, she fucking knew, she shouldn’t be involved with anyone. Because when you get close to people, your debt becomes their debt, and theirs becomes yours, and you are left with nothing but an aching well of shame inside you as you try to claw your way out.
Clay could be just like Dillon – disappear and leaving her holding all his problems.
She put the phone in a kitchen drawer and shut it hard.
“Uncross your legs,” Gayle said, pointing her sharp scissors at Julia.
“You have the weapon. I do as you say,” Julia said, following orders. “But why is it that I see you every six weeks and I still can’t remember to uncross my legs?”
“Maybe because you have too much else on your mind,” Gayle said, patting Julia’s shoulder then widening her stance so she could trim the ends of her hair.
The stylist dressed in black as she always did, and today’s homage to the shade of midnight was a black tunic top and tight leggings, with black cowboy boots on her feet. Down her arm was her permanent mark – a tattoo in a swirling script that said I want to be adored. Julia loved the boldness in branding her own body with a wish for love. She longed for that sort of daring. The wish had come true; Gayle had met someone recently who she’d fallen hard and fast for, and he for her. There were no issues, no problems, no pasts in the way.
Of course, you never knew what was coming. When someone would turn on you. She would never have predicted Dillon would be a world-class douche. A knot of anger was set loose in her body at the thought of the ex; like a marble in a Rube Goldberg machine, it rolled down the tracks, picking up speed. Her insides were twisted, and Dillon wasn’t the sole cause. She’d been wracked with tension since she left Clay behind in a swirl of dust in New York. Every night she’d been tempted to text, to call, to chat. Every night she’d resisted.
Her chest felt like a pressure valve inside her. The valve was stuck, so the pressure kept building. She tapped her toe on the hardwood floor of the salon as Gayle cut.
“What’s the story, Jules? You’re jumpy today.”
She sighed heavily, as if the weight of the last week were pouring out in that one breath. “Oh Gayle, it’s getting harder,” she said, because she couldn’t take it anymore. Her stylist was the only person who had a clue about the troubles Dillon dumped on her doorstep with when he skipped town with Charlie’s money, claiming she’d be paying it off. Julia reckoned a stylist was akin to a shrink. Maybe even a priest. A stylist was the one person you could pour out all your secrets to. Gayle wasn’t a part of her regular life – she was someone she saw every six weeks. Neat and cordoned off, safe from the harm that was circling her on the other side. “I still owe a crap ton of money, and the people I owe it to aren’t making it any easier for me, and on top of that, I met someone I really like, but I can’t let myself get close to him because of all this stuff going on, and I want to trust him, but he might screw me over too, but I miss him like crazy, which makes no sense because it was only one weekend. Okay, it was two weekends, but still, they were both spectacular,” she said, the words spilling out of her. Julia stopped talking for a second, stared in the mirror at her friend’s reflection. “Wow. That was like a confessional or something.”
She squeezed Julia’s shoulder, then continued snipping. “I’m so glad you met someone you like. It’s been so long since Dillon, and even then you weren’t terribly fond of the douche. With good reason, of course,” she quickly added, with a wry smile.